The Fondef IDeA R&D 2024 competition awarded funding to 95 projects nationwide, 18 of them led by or with the participation of researchers from the Universidad de Concepción. The initiatives focus on the transfer of knowledge to society, on a variety of topics.

The National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) announced the results of its IDeA I+D 2024 competition in which it selected a total of 95 projects at national level in its generic and thematic project lines. In this call, the Universidad de Concepción received funding for 18 projects, 16 of them as the main beneficiary and 2 as a secondary institution.

This is a public line aimed at institutions of higher education and technological and research and development (R&D) institutes and other institutions that carry out scientific and technological activities, to promote the development of applied science to generate products, services or processes that have the potential to be transferred and/or scaled. The selected projects have up to 24 months for their implementation and have access to resources of up to $ 220 million.

The Vice Rector for Research and Development, Dr. Andrea Rodriguez Tastets highlighted that, “adding the number of projects as main or secondary beneficiary, we lead the number of awards with 19% at the national level”.

“What is also interesting is that not only researchers with previous experience in Fondef appear, but there are new teams leading and with seven female directors,” she emphasized. “The topics are diverse, with high participation in engineering topics, but also including projects in agronomy, forestry, aquaculture, pharmacy and physiopathology.”

The university authority took the opportunity to greet the members of the beneficiary teams, but also those who were not selected. “We congratulate all those who have been awarded projects, we also thank the efforts of those who were not selected, hoping that they can have another opportunity and that we achieve awards in new areas. Finally, I would like to thank the management team that supports these projects and follows up on them, since strength is achieved as a team,” he emphasized.

Regarding these results, the Director of Development and Innovation, Dr. Jorge Carpinelli Pavisich, said: “Along with the joy that always comes from receiving this news, there is a sense of responsibility that we have acquired as an institution to carry out with scientific excellence the proposals that our researchers have been awarded. FONDEF projects are an important source for subsidizing technological development and applied research, for a future transfer of these results, which will contribute to the competitiveness of the national economy and strengthen the quality of life and well-being of Chileans”.

At the same time, he added: “The very good result obtained fills us with pride, recognizes the work we have been doing and confirms the vocation and capabilities of our community of academics to propose high quality R&D initiatives, I thank them for their work and wish them the best of success”.

The UdeC projects awarded in each category of the competition are:

Generic projects line.

They address problems, opportunities or challenges of all sectors of the national activity, contributing to generate impacts in the economic, social, environmental and/or territorial areas:

  • Development and application of a software based on artificial intelligence for the optimization of blasting and planning in subway mining, Asieh Hekmat, Faculty of Engineering.
  • Development and validation of a functional, extruded and compostable film from modified starch, bioplastics and extracts from olive oil industry by-products, for packaging of chilled fresh Chilean salmon, Johanna Castaño, Faculty of Engineering.
  • Porphygel: production of carrageenan from the microalgae porphyridium cruentum as a new alternative for the hydrocolloid industry, Jesy Pavón, Faculty of Pharmacy.
  • Vegencol: development of paper sizing agents from residual vegetable oil as an alternative to petroleum derivatives, Óscar Valerio, Faculty of Engineering.
  • Molecular tool for monitoring the pharmacological sensitivity and environmental impact of antiparasitic products against sea lice in the salmon farming industry, Gustavo Núñez, INCAR
  • Model for the evaluation and optimization of remediation processes of marine environments altered by aquaculture, Marcelo Gutiérrez, COPAS.
  • Development of a process to obtain low cost and low activation cycle nanostructured feti alloys for use in solid state hydrogen storage systems for mobile applications, Juan Pablo Sanhueza, Faculty of Engineering.
  • Cyanorepair: bioprocess for obtaining stable photolyase from the inductive culture of cyanobacteria for the cosmeceutical industry, Alejandro Vallejos, Faculty of Pharmacy.
  • Development of an infrared detection probe based on chlorophyll-loaded microparticles for its potential use in targeted oncological surgery, Iván González, Faculty of Biological Sciences.
  • Low-cost and portable system for the evaluation of people’s movement, Pablo Aqueveque, Faculty of Engineering.
  • Biopesticide based on Chilean macroalgae for the control of economically important fruit tree diseases, Katherine Sossa, Faculty of Forestry Sciences.
  • Recovery of heavy metals and lanthanides by means of a biosorbent obtained from the valorization of sewage sludge, Marlen Roeckel, Faculty of Engineering.
  • Innovation in fish farming, capture and conditioning of deep sea cod broodstock for the beginning of the sustainable use of the resource, Ariel Valenzuela, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Oceanography.
  • System for monitoring the conditions of industrial respirators, Sergio Sobarzo, Faculty of Engineering.

Thematic projects line

The thematic projects seek to solve challenges in a sector or topics defined by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and those awarded at UdeC are:

  • Development of a powdered extract formulated from plantago lanceolata and cichorium intybus plants to inhibit enteric methane synthesis in dairy cows, Verónica Merino, Faculty of Agronomy.
  • Biomaterial adsorbent for the removal of contaminants in water from natural polymers, Patricia Castaño, Technological Development Unit.

In this category, UdeC also participates as a secondary institution in the following projects:

  • SIC4T: A Standardized EtherCAT-based Industrial Control system for Telescopes, Rodrigo Reeves, Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
  • Bioreactor for the production of enzymes capable of bioremediation of hydrocarbons in industrial riles, Javier Ferrer, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering.

A stimulus to collaboration between academia and industry

Among the researchers leading this type of project for the first time, Dr. Asieh Hekmat, from the Department of Metallurgical Engineering, explained that her project improves the accuracy of mine planning. It also offers the opportunity to significantly reduce labor costs and increase the Net Present Value (NPV) of the project, as well as the average grade mined. This is because, in their words, the initiative seeks to “create a complete model that considers dilution and calculates extraction periods based on operational parameters, optimizing the economic envelope”.

The project has the collaboration of the company CodeMining, which specializes in the development of technological tools for the mining industry. “It has extensive experience in the development of specialized and specific software requested by various companies such as AMSA, Codelco, among others,” said the scientist. It is expected that technological scaling opportunities will arise, aimed at creating a more advanced and complete block caving mine planning software, which integrates drilling and blasting modules, as well as material flow simulation. All this, “to more accurately model and predict the effects of dilution and calculate the optimal extraction periods, which will optimize the economic envelope of the project,” said Hekmat.

Dr. Marcelo Gutiérrez Astete heads a project in which the UdeC is collaborating with the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and two companies: KRAN Spa and DVS Tecnología Spa. “They are companies that provide services to salmon farming to improve the conditions of the seabed once they are altered by the overload of organic matter removed by the salmon farming centers”.

The also COPAS Coastal researcher detailed that the objective is to make “a follow-up or an evaluation of the effectiveness of these remediation processes, and what we propose is to develop a model that allows a working model or scheme that allows the evaluation of these systems and propose improvements, which brings benefits, both to the service providers and to the Undersecretariat of Fisheries, in charge of authorizing or not that these mechanisms are executed.”

Source: VRID UdeC Press Release